Botito's recycled-plastic toy robot ships in a bin-shaped pulp pack — Pentawards Gold

Botito Eco Guardián is an educational robot from Santa Fe, Argentina, assembled entirely from recovered plastics joined by elastic cords. It needed retail packaging that matched its mission of teaching children to rethink waste — without adding new waste of its own.

Make the pack a miniature waste bin molded from 100% recycled paper pulp, so the packaging itself delivers the toy's lesson: discarded material gets a second life.

Tridimage designed a bin-inspired pack molded from 100% recycled paper pulp using 3D-printed molds, printed with water-based biodegradable inks and closed with a recyclable cardboard sleeve. The uncoated pulp finish leaves the raw material visible.

Won Pentawards 2025 Gold in Sustainable Design plus the People's Choice Award. Botito has recovered 12.5 tonnes of plastic since 2010 and expanded from Santa Fe to Uruguay, Mexico, Colombia and Chile.

Botito Eco Guardián began with two environmentalists in Santa Fe, Argentina — José María Rodríguez and Daniela Czajkowski — turning plastic bound for open-air dumps into an educational robot toy assembled from recovered containers, caps and elastic cords. Each robot is unique because its body is whatever plastic was rescued.

Packaging agency Tridimage was asked to create retail packaging worthy of that mission. Their answer was meta-packaging: a box shaped like a waste bin, molded from 100% recycled paper pulp, fully recyclable and compostable. Production used 3D-printed molds to optimize material use, water-based biodegradable inks and a recyclable cardboard band, with an uncoated finish that shows the raw pulp.

The pack thus demonstrates the circular economy the toy teaches — the container that protects the product is itself proof that discarded material can have a second life, and it offers multiple end-of-life paths: recycling, home or industrial composting, or creative reuse.

At Pentawards 2025 the design won Gold in the Sustainable Design category and the People's Choice Award voted by the community. Botito reports 12.5 tonnes of plastic recovered since 2010, over 100 further tonnes avoided through workshops, and expansion into Uruguay, Mexico, Colombia and Chile.

The pack's bin shape and raw pulp finish make the circular-economy argument physically, before any copy is read

Every production choice — 3D-printed molds, water-based inks, no coating — keeps the pack recyclable and compostable

The design won both expert (Gold) and public (People's Choice) validation at Pentawards 2025

The packaging reinforced a measurable mission: 12.5 tonnes of plastic recovered and expansion to five countries

When the product carries a message, the packaging can be the message: form, material and finish can argue the idea before a single word is read.

The Pentawards double win gave the Santa Fe project international visibility, supporting Botito's expansion from Argentina into Uruguay, Mexico, Colombia and Chile, alongside its educational workshops on plastic waste.